WHO: Global coronavirus deaths drop to lowest in two years

The world last week saw a 23% drop in the number of deaths from COVID-19 (32,959), which is the lowest figure since the end of March 2020, despite the fact that global infections increased again, as indicated today by the World Health Organization (WHO).

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For two years, shortly after the WHO declared that covid had become a pandemic, only on another occasion (the third week of May 2020) had it been below 33,000 global cases, with contagion figures then almost identical to those of the last weekly epidemiological report of the WHO.

In America, deaths fell by 42% last week (8,800), while in Europe, Africa and South Asia the drop was almost 20% (14,000 deaths among the three regions), in the Middle East 38% (1,000 deaths ) and in East Asia alone there was a 5% increase, to almost 7,000 deaths.

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The countries that registered the most deaths from March 14 to 20, 3,600 each, were Russia and the United States, followed by Brazil (2,200), South Korea (2,000) and China (1,900).

In contrast to the drop in serious cases and deaths, global covid infections rose for the second consecutive week and reached 12.3 million, 7% more than in the previous seven days.

A number that own who estimates that in reality it could be much higher, since many countries have greatly reduced testing, due to the proliferation of mild and asymptomatic cases.

The rise in confirmed cases is linked to the wave of infections linked to the omicron variant in East Asia and the Pacific, where positives increased by 21% last week and exceeded six million, while in Europe 5.2 were registered. million cases, almost the same figure as the previous week.

In the rest of the regions combined, it barely exceeded one million cases, with decreases of 17% in infections registered in America, 23% in South Asia, 41% in the Middle East and 33% in Africa.

South Korea was once again the country with the most confirmed cases (2.8 million), followed by Vietnam (1.8 million), Germany (1.5 million), France (582,000) and Australia (513,000), the latter country where infections skyrocketed 161%.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 470 million cases of covid have been recorded, with more than six million deaths.

99.8% of the cases analyzed in the laboratory already belong to the omicron variant, which since its appearance in November 2021 was quickly imposing itself on the delta due to its greater contagion capacity (around 70% more transmissibility), although associated cases tend to be less severe.

who He also pointed out in his report that of the omicron subvariants, BA.2 has already become the predominant one, since it has been detected in almost 86% of the cases analyzed in the laboratory and has a special presence in the current wave of infections in Asia. East and Pacific.

The organization also states that it has detected several cases that combine the delta and omicron variants (called “deltacron” by some), although it stresses that it is a “natural” phenomenon and that none of the preliminary evidence suggests that they are associated with cases more serious of covid.

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Source: Elcomercio

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